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<h1 class="reader-title">Beijing's useful idiots - UnHerd</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">ianbirrell</div>
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<p>Just over a year ago, I stumbled across an intriguing
scientific paper. It suggested the pandemic that was
ripping around the world was “uniquely adapted to infect
humans”; it was “not typical of a normal zoonotic
infection” since it first appeared with “exceptional”
ability to enter human cells. The author of the paper,
Nikolai Petrovsky, was frank about the disease when we
spoke back then, saying its adaptability was either “a
remarkable coincidence or a sign of human intervention”.
He even broke the scientific omertà by daring to admit
that “no one can say a laboratory leak is not a
possibility”.</p>
<p>But even though Petrovsky has excellent credentials —
professor of medicine at a prominent Australian
university, author of more than 200 papers in scientific
journals and founder of a company funded by the US
government to develop new vaccine technologies — I was
still anxious <a
href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8351091/Top-vaccine-scientist-says-coronavirus-come-animal-freak-nature.html"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">when my story went
global</a>. His original document had been posted on a
pre-print site, so had not been peer reviewed, unlike if
it had been published in a medical or scientific
journal. These sorts of sites allow researchers to get
findings out quickly. Petrovsky told me his first
attempt to place these seismic findings was on BioRxiv,
run by prominent New York laboratory. But it was
rejected; eventually he succeeded on ArXiv, a rival
server run by Cornell University. Last week, however, he
told me this important origins modelling paper had
finally been accepted by Nature Scientific Reports after
“a harrowing 12 months of repeated reviews, rejections,
appeals, re-reviews and finally now acceptance”.</p>
<p>This acceptance is one more sign of the changing
political climate as suddenly it is deemed permissible
to discuss the possibility that the virus causing havoc
around the world might have emerged from a laboratory.<b> </b>Petrovsky
has had to endure what he calls “the legitimacy” of his
paper as a peer-reviewed publication being denied for a
critical 12 months — and he is far from alone. “I have
heard all too many tales from other academics who have
been equally frustrated in getting their manuscripts
dealing with research into the origins of the virus
published,” he said.</p>
<p>Bear in mind that in the heat of this pandemic, papers
printed in important journals were peer-reviewed within
10 weeks; one rattled through the process in just nine
days for<span> </span><i>Nature</i>. But, like
Petrovsky, I have heard similar stories from many other
frustrated experts who confronted the conventional
wisdom that this lethal virus was a natural spillover
event. Some could not even get letters published, let
alone challenge those key papers promoting the Chinese
perspective which have since turned out to be flawed or
wrong.</p>
<p>Only now is acceptance emerging that the science
establishment colluded to dismiss the lab leak
hypothesis as a conspiracy theory, assisted by prominent
experts with clear conflicts of interest, patsy
politicians and a pathetic media that mostly failed to
do its job. And yet, at the heart of this scandal lie
some of the world’s most influential science journals.
These should provide a forum for pulsating debate as
experts explore and test theories, especially on
something as contentious and fascinating as the possible
origins of a global pandemic. Instead, some have played
a central role in shutting down discussion and
discrediting alternative views on the origins, with
disastrous consequences for our understanding of events.</p>
<p>Many scientists have been dismayed by their actions.
“It is very important to talk about the scientific
journals — I think they are partially responsible for
the cover-up,” said Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo, a
leading French evolutionary biologist and key member of
the Paris Group of scientists challenging the
established view on these issues. The rejection of the
lab leak hypothesis, she argues, in many places was not
due to Trump’s intervention but the result of
“respectable scientific journals not accepting to
discuss the matter”.</p>
<p>The Paris Group, for instance, submitted a letter to<span> </span><i>The
Lancet</i><span> </span>in early January signed by 14
experts from around the world calling for an open
debate, arguing that “the natural origin is not
supported by conclusive arguments and that a lab origin
cannot be formally discarded”. This does not seem
contentious. But it was rejected on the basis it was
“not a priority for us”. When the authors queried this
decision, it was reassessed and returned without peer
review by editor-in-chief Richard Horton with a terse
dismissal saying “we have agreed to uphold our original
decision to let this go”. The authors ended up
publishing their statement on a pre-print site.</p>
<p>Yet this is the same prestigious journal that published
a now infamous statement early last year attacking “<a
href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">conspiracy theories
suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural
origin</a>“. Clearly, this was designed to stifle
debate. It was signed by 27 experts but later turned out
to have been covertly drafted by <a
href="https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/ecohealth-alliance-orchestrated-key-scientists-statement-on-natural-origin-of-sars-cov-2/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">Peter Daszak</a>, the
British scientist with extensive ties to Wuhan Institute
of Virology. To make matters worse,<span> </span><i>The
Lancet<span> </span></i>then set up a commission on
the origins — and incredibly, picked Daszak to chair its
12-person task force, joined by five others who signed
that statement dismissing ideas the virus was not a
natural occurrence.</p>
<p>Horton has been scathing about British government
failures on the pandemic, even publishing a book
lambasting them. Perhaps he would do well to turn his
critical fire on his own journal’s failings as its 200th
anniversary approaches. This is, remember, the same
organ that inflamed the anti-vaccine movement by
promoting Andrew Wakefield’s nonsense on MMR jabs — and
then took 12 years to retract the damaging paper. But it
is far from alone. The Paris Group has been collecting
details of dissenting scientists, whose letters or
critical articles were rebuffed by key journals which
include<span> </span><i>Nature</i><span> </span>and<span> </span><i>Science</i>,
another two of the world’s most influential vehicles for
scientific debate.</p>
<p><i>Nature</i>’s stance has been especially
questionable. Around the same time as Daszak’s letter
was printed, a statement started appearing at the top of
some previously-published papers such as one on “gain of
function research” by US virologist Ralph Baric and Shi
Zhengli, the “batwoman” expert from Wuhan, entitled “A
SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows
potential for human emergence”. This carefully-crafted
note said such papers were being used as “basis for
unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing
Covid-19 was engineered”, adding “there is no evidence
that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is
the most likely source of the coronavirus”.</p>
<p><i>Nature</i><span> </span>also published a landmark
paper from Prof Shi and two colleagues, sent to them on
the same day last January that China belatedly admitted
to human transmission. This detailed the existence of a
virus called RaTG13 that was taken from a horseshoe bat
and stored at Wuhan Institute of Virology. It was said
to be the closest known relative to Sars-Cov-2 with more
than 96% genetic similarity. This was highly significant
since it underlined that such diseases occur in nature,
yet although closely related, would have taken decades
to evolve in the wild and seemed too distant to be
manipulated in a laboratory.</p>
<p>Some experts were immediately suspicious over the lack
of information on this new strain. The reason soon
became clear: its name had been changed from another
virus identified in a previous paper but — unusually for
such a publication — this was not cited in<span> </span><i>Nature</i>.
This masked a link to three miners who had died from a
strange respiratory disease while clearing out bat
droppings in a cave in south China, which was hundreds
of miles from Wuhan but used by Shi and her colleagues
to collect samples from bats. The Wuhan researchers even
admitted they had eight more undisclosed Sars-like
viruses from the mine. But despite a barrage of
complaints that began within weeks of publication, it
took <em>Nature</em> 10 months to publish her addendum,
which only raised more questions that remain unanswered
to this day.</p>
<p><span><i>Nature</i> <i>Medicine</i>, its sister
publication, was also home for the second key
commentary that set the tone in the scientific
community after Daszak’s outing in <i>The Lancet. </i>“</span>The
proximal origin of Sars-CoV-2″ bluntly concluded that
“we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based
scenario is plausible”. Critics pointed out it was
questionable to claim there was any “evidence” proving
that Sars-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus.
Others noted that the statement mentions the mysterious
furin cleavage site — which Nikolai Petrovksy drew
attention to as allowing the spike protein to bind
effectively to cells in human tissues yet which is not
found in the most closely-related coronaviruses —
but downplays its potential significance. The statement
suggests “it is likely that Sars-CoV-2-like viruses with
partial or full polybasic cleavage sites will be
discovered in other species”. This has not happened so
far.</p>
<p>This document — whose five signatories include one
expert who was handed China’s top award for foreign
scientists after nearly 20 years work there, and another
who is a “guest professor” for the Chinese Centre for
Disease Control and Prevention — has been accessed 5.4
million times and cited almost 1,500 times in other
papers. It is so influential that when I emailed Jeremy
Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and one of<span> </span><i>The
Lancet</i><span> </span>signatories, to see if his
stance remained the same, he pointed me to this paper
that he called “the most important research on the
genomic epidemiology of the origins of this virus”.</p>
<p>The lead author was Kristian Andersen, an immunologist
at Scripps Research Institute in California who has been
a very active voice on social media condemning the lab
leak theory and confronting its proponents. Yet the
recent release of emails to Anthony Fauci exposed that
Andersen had previously admitted to the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director
that the virus had unusual features that “(potentially)
look engineered” and which are “inconsistent with
expectations from evolutionary theory”. He claimed last
week the discussion was “clear example of the scientific
process” but as another top scientist said to me: “What
a smoking gun!”. Now Anderson’s twitter account has
suddenly disappeared.</p>
<p>There are many more examples. For instance, China
pointed the finger at animals sold at the Huanan Seafood
Market two days after admitting there was human
transmission of the virus. Within weeks, four
manuscripts describing a pangolin virus with a similar
spike receptor-binding domain to Sars-Cov-2 were
submitted to journals, all relying heavily on data
published by one group of Chinese scientists the
previous year. Two of these papers on pangolin
coronaviruses were run by <em>Nature</em>. Inevitably,
the articles sparked intense global discussion over
whether pangolins sold at the market were the missing
zoonotic link between bats and human beings, similar to
civet cats with the first Sars epidemic.</p>
<p>The pangolin link was a false trail laid from China.<span> </span><i>Nature</i>,
however, rejected a submission from another key
scientific dissident that showed how all four papers
primarily used samples from the same batch of pangolins
and that key data was inaccurately reported in two of
these papers. Richard Ebright, a bio-security expert and
professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University,
argues that such tolerance of “material omissions and
material misstatements” expose a massive issue. “<em>Nature</em>
and <em>The Lancet</em> played important roles in
enabling, encouraging, and enforcing the false narrative
that science evidence indicates Sars-CoV-2 had a
natural-spillover origin points and the false narrative
that this was the scientific consensus”.</p>
<p>Or as another well-placed observer put it: “The game
seems to be for <em>Nature</em> and <em>The Lancet</em>
to rush non-peer revised correspondences to set the tone
and then delay critical papers and responses.”</p>
<p>But why would they do this? This is where things become
even murkier. Allegations swirl that it was not down to
editorial misjudgement, but something more sinister: a
desire to appease China for commercial reasons. The <em>Financial
Times</em> <a
href="https://www.ft.com/content/b68b2f86-c072-11e7-b8a3-38a6e068f464"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">revealed four years ago</a>
that debt-laden Springer Nature, the German group that
publishes<span> </span><i>Nature,<span> </span></i>was
blocking access in China to hundreds of academic
articles mentioning subjects deemed sensitive by Beijing
such as Hong Kong, Taiwan or Tibet. China is also
spending lavishly around the world to win supremacy in
science — which includes becoming the biggest national
sponsor of open access journals published by both
Springer Nature and <a
href="https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/corporate/elsevier-announces-the-opening-of-its-office-in-beijing-and-a-number-of-key-strategic-initiatives-in-china"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elsevier</a>, owner of<span> </span><i>The
Lancet</i>.</p>
<p>One source estimated that 49 sponsorship agreements
between Springer Nature and Chinese institutions were
worth at least $10m last year. These deals cover the
publishing fees authors would normally pay in such
journals, so they smooth the path for Chinese authors
while creating a dependency culture. They have worked
well for both sides: they offer the publishers access to
the surging Chinese market and its well-resourced
universities, while offering international recognition
and status in return. But we know President Xi Jinping
demands compliance with his world view, even from
foreign-owned companies — and especially on an issue as
sensitive as his nation’s possible role in unleashing a
global catastrophe.</p>
<p>Critics fear these corporate links to China compromise
output and distort agendas. “Scientific publishing has
become a highly politicised business,” argues Petrovksy.
“Clearly there needs to be an international
investigation launched into the role of scientific
publishers, their increasingly powerful influence as the
major publishing houses buy out many of the smaller
independent journals, together with their growing
politicisation and susceptibility to overt influence. We
need to examine what impact this may have had in the
pandemic and what impact it could have on science in the
future.”</p>
<p>Certainly it is valid to ask where was the real
conspiracy in this tawdry saga that has stained so many
reputations?</p>
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